“Spiritual Pulse” Letter from Churchgoer Per the Request of a Local Pastor
By Jacques Fleury
Local Pastor: Dear Churchgoers,
We live in uncertain times filled with both possibility and peril, not to mention the daily joys and challenges of living. What are your hopes, dreams and fears in [sic] this moment? What are the urgent spiritual, moral, ethical, and religious questions that are on your hearts as we face these turbulent times? Your questions also help me take the “spiritual pulse” of our congregation, and they inform my preaching throughout the year.
Churchgoer’s reply to Pastor’s request:
I attended this Sunday’s service and although I spoke to the Reverend about how much I “felt” his sermon in the viscera of my soul, which left me in a haze of joy, I did not get a chance to tell him how much I enjoyed the singing and piano playing and how it blended harmoniously with the his sermon on being “grounded” through deep penetrating “roots” of the spirit.
The choir sounded ethereal, as a creative, I felt like I was in one of my lofty literary dreams, as doves and butterflies flutter around me in some, as we say in French “Île de la Cité” akin to Elysian Fields …in some island paradise.
First and foremost, I want to offer a snippet about my origins. I am from the island of Hispaniola, as it was re-named by notorious colonial era usurper Christopher Columbus or Hayti (meaning mountainous land) as it was originally named by the indigenous Native American Indians, I have not been there since I left to study abroad with my parents in America when I’d just completed the 7th grade in an exclusive, strict and abusive catholic school near the Haitian White House called Frere Andre or “Brother Andre” in English. My father had U.S. Residence & mercantile status as a business owner hence he lived in both America and in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, where his retail store was located adjacent to the then Versace storefront in the bustling sunny city.
Both he and mom owned businesses so they both travelled back-and- forth which meant sometimes I had to live in other parts of the world. At times I stayed with my paternal grandmother, who was biracial, my paternal great grandfather was a “white” man from France, hence explaining the reasons why my DNA tests on Ancestry dot com reveals Euro-Afro-Haitian ancestry since I’m also a descendent of enslaved West Africans brought to Haiti by the French for the purpose of cultivating and harvesting a then prosperous island replete with natural resources. Bauxite (aluminum ore), copper, calcium carbonate, gold, and marble were the most extensively extracted minerals in Haiti. Once the richest colony in the world, Saint Domingue (Haiti) was a leader in the production of sugar, coffee, indigo, cacao, and cotton.
I have published four books thus far and in all my books you’ll soon find out that Hayti, or St. Domingue/Santo Domingo or Haiti, as it is now called, and its people are NOT defined by “misery and hardship” as the mostly North American mainstream media would have you believe.
In the impassioned pages of my books, you will find stories of beauty, joy, resiliency and its revolutionary marker as the First Black Republic in the world and it was money from the then prosperous island that France used to supplement the American Revolution and Haitians also came to fight America’s fight against the British for independence for which they are memorialized in Savannah, Georgia. “The largest unit of soldiers of African descent who fought in the American Revolution was the brave “Les Chasseurs Volontaires de Saint Domingue from Haiti. This regiment consisted of free men who volunteered for a campaign to capture Savannah from the British in 1779” according to Contemporary Monuments to the Slave Past. The island constituted 70% percent of France’s economy, which is why they fought so hard to uphold the system of slavery and keep the country under French rule.
Now that I’ve said a bit about myself to provide some interpersonal context, here are my questions; which will be listed in two parts.
Part I.
I spent my early primary schooling in catholic school up the 7th grade when my father sent me to study in the States. I was physically and psychologically abused by the “Brothers” in my school, which has damaged my sense of self-worth and trust in “any” religious organization.
Q. How do you propose healing these immanent wounds of yore and letting go of the anger and resentment I often wrestle with daily and be able to keep my heart “open” to the love and light from a Higher Power, or Universal life Force Energy, God, or Allah whatever one chooses to call him/her/them etc…?
Part II.
Growing up in America has also inflicted additional wounds to my already wounded heart having been labeled falsely a “Black man” when I am just “A Man” — due to the pseudoscience of eugenics and polygenesis–and considered an anomaly and the pejorative prejudice that is tethered along with that notion and practice. I try to keep an open mind and heart and try not to see the potential for more harm from those who look like the people who’d acted with prejudicial intents in the past; and who conceivably continue the atavistic practice of discrimination and dehumanization against those who look like me in the present. Particularly considering the Global Call for Social Justice and Racial Reckoning currently manifesting in America and elsewhere after collectively witnessing the public lynching of George Floyd on National Television. All this harmful racialized hoopla triggered by the misinformation and xenophobic theoretical discrimination exalted by biased “scientists” of yore. They exalted a myriad origins of humanity and consequently separated the races into white, brown, black etc.
As you may already know, Polygenism was expressed in the seventeenth century in the work of Isaac De Peyrère (1596–1676) and by some philosophers and writers of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment. Monogenists of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, such as Buffon and Blumenbach, countered, arguing for the unity of the human species as ONE race: the human race.
I have written extensively about this in my book: Chain Letter To America: The One Thing You Can Do To End Racism for according over 100 years of genome research from such prestigious Universities as the likes of Stanford and Harvard, the first civilization was traced back to sub Saharan Africa 50,000 years ago, before their eventual migration to Asia, Europe and other parts of the world hence we are all geophysical representations of our African ancestors! The farther away from the equator, the lighter our skin colors and other modified traits. I wish this had been taught in high school…which would have probably prevented my negative sense of self and the ensuing feelings of “inferiority & not enoughness” which then propelled me to write my latest book: You Are Enough: The Journey to Accepting Your Authentic Self to celebrate myself just as I am!
Q: How do I reconcile the celebration of newfound racial justice “allies” and/or “accomplices” while navigating the relative continued oppression of Black Indigenous People of Color (BIPOC) in America?
Rev. I am aware that my two questions almost read more like essays, it’s just that I have NEVER been given this opportunity before…NO ONE has ever asked me about how I feel about these matters since I’ve been an American citizen or “Black” or “African (-) American” or “Haitian (-) American” citizen etc… As the ubiquitous Pulitzer Prize winning writer Toni Morrison of “Beloved” fame once said: “In this country American means white. Everybody else has to hyphenate (-).”
Thank you, Reverend, for this momentous and iconoclastic opportunity. I will treasure it always. One Love!
Jacques Stanley Fleury is a Haitian-American Poet, Author and Educator. He holds an undergraduate degree in Liberal Arts and is currently pursuing graduate studies in the literary arts at Harvard University online. Once on the editing staff of The Watermark, a literary magazine at the University of Massachusetts, his first book Sparks in the Dark: A Lighter Shade of Blue, A Poetic Memoir was featured in and endorsed by the Boston Globe. His second book: It’s Always Sunrise Somewhere and Other Stories is a collection of short fictional stories dealing with the human condition as the characters navigate life’s foibles and was featured on Good Reads. His current book and hitherto magnum opus Chain Letter to America: The One Thing You Can Do to End Racism, A Collection of Essays, Fiction and Poetry Celebrating Multiculturalism explores social justice in America and his latest book, “You Are Enough: The Journey to Accepting Your Authentic Self” along with all other previously mentioned titles are available at public libraries, The Harvard Book Store, Porter Square Books, The Grolier Bookshop, Goodreads, bookshop, Amazon etc. His CD A Lighter Shade of Blue as a lyrics writer in collaboration with the neo-folk musical group Sweet Wednesday is available on Amazon, iTunes & Spotify to benefit Haitian charity St. Boniface.
